Viktor Chernomyrdin

Forty three parties want power. But we have the power.

Viktor Chernomyrdin, 1995

Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin was born in Cherny Ostrog
village, Orenburg region, in 1938. In 1966, Chernomyrdin
graduated from Kuybyshev Polytechnic Institute, in
1972 - from the School of Economics of the All-Union Correspondence
Polytechnic Institute. He has a Ph.D. in Engineering.
He worked as an operator and a unit chief at Orsk oil refinery,
then joined the staff of the City Committee of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union in Orsk. After that, he became a
deputy of the Engineer General at Orenburg gas refinery, then
its manager.

From 1978 to 1982 Chernomyrdin was a staff member of
the Central Commitee of the Communist Party. Since 1982,
a Deputy Minister of Gas Industry of the USSR and, simultaneously,
the head of the All-Union Association on Natural Gas Production
in Tyumen region. Later, Chernomyrdin became
Minister of Gas Industry of the USSR. From 1985 to 1989, he headed
the Ministry of Oil and Gas Industry.
Since 1989, he was the CEO of the Gazprom concern.
In 1992, President Boris Yeltsin
appointed Viktor Chernomyrdin the Prime Minister of
the Russian Federation. The seventh Congress of People's Deputies
of Russia confirmed this appointment in December, 1992.

In June of 1994, Viktor Chernomyrdin underwent kidney surgery
in the Urology Clinic of Johannes Gutenberg University in
Mainz, Germany, to get stones removed.

On June 14, 1995, some 100 Chechen terrorists under the command
of Shamil Basayev stormed Russian town of
Budennovsk, 70 km (45 miles) from Chechnya. They killed scores of
people and escaped to a hospital with hundreds of hostages.
Commandos failed to capture the attackers and free the hostages.
On June 18, 1995, Viktor Chernomyrdin
negotiated with the terrorists by telephone. The next day,
Chechen gunmen left Budennovsk in a convoy of buses
with remaining hostages, who were eventually freed. The terrorists
were allowed back to Chechnya.

The failure
of the initial operation ordered by President Yeltsin and
supervised by Minister of Defense Grachev, Minister of
Security Stepashin, and Minister of the Interior Yerin
resulted in Stepashin and Yerin being fired.
Pavel Grachev retained his position as the Minister
of Defense despite the fact that Viktor Chernomyrdin
voted for his sacking at a cabinet meeting.

Novoe vremya (no. 48)
argues that Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin was the main force behind the
November, 1995, dismissal for "gross
financial violations" of Col. Gen. Vasily Vorobev, head of the Defense Ministry's budget and finance department. The magazine asserts that Vorobev was involved in the
misappropriation of large sums destined for the army and that this led to regular delays in the payment of
servicemen's salaries. When Chernomyrdin learned the details, he reportedly went to President Yeltsin, who fired
Vorobev. Novoe vremya speculated that Chernomyrdin's intervention was linked to his promise on 15 November to
pay the government's debts to the military. Vorobev's dismissal, the paper contends, would allow him to attribute the
shortages not to government inefficiency, but to the army, while his attempts to remove the "miltary mafia" would improve his prestige in the military.

"We are opposed to support for any ideas pursuing a revolutionary, forcible
change in the current system."

"We are for continuity in the policy of democratic transformations in Russia."

"We aspire to be a truly popular movement of the broad centre, expressing
people's main interests."

"We are for honesty, openness, glasnost and democracy."

The movement attracted sympathies of many prominent members of
the ruling elite of Russia and got nicknamed "the party of power".
Our Home Is Russia has tens of thousands activists.
The list of its leaders is a gallery of big shots of federal
and regional levels. Sponsors of Our Home Is Russia
include PromRadTechBank, AvtoVAZ, and Gazprom.

Our Home Is Russia won 10.13% of the party list vote and
12.22% of the Duma seats in December, 1995, to produce the second
largest Duma faction.
Viktor Chernomyrdin said he is "satisfied" with the election results, characterizing his bloc's worse than expected
showing as neither a success nor a failure. "The Communist Party has existed for 97 years and won only 20%. Our
Home Is Russia has worked only four months and we were able to win 10%," he told Russian TV on 18 December.

However, Chernomyrdin himself has struck a pessimistic note in his
public appearances. The decision in 1993 to elect the State
Duma for only two years was a "most serious error," he told Argumenty i fakty, adding that "one can work with this
Duma. The deputies have begun to understand what is what." Speaking on Radio Rossii on 12 December, 1995,
Chernomyrdin claimed to have "faith in the reason of the calm, normal person," but his appeal to voters was quite
defensive. The prime minister promised that the conflict in Chechnya will not be "endless," the army's "difficult
situation" will not be "eternal," people will not be left without salaries, and soldiers will not be poorly fed and clothed.
Similarly, he admitted that the economic policies "of the last decade" had not always benefited rural areas but
pledged to continue agricultural reform without imposing such policies "by force."

On October 5, 1995, Viktor Chernomyrdin announced, "I have never
planned, and I am not planning to run for president next year".
This announcement took place prior to
Yeltsin's second heart
attack in 1995, but Chernomyrdin repeated it in December,
in his interview given to Argumenty i fakty.
The parliamentary leader of Our Home Is Russia,
Sergei Beliayev, announced on January 29, 1996, that the bloc,
created initially to support Chernomyrdin, would now devote
itself to electing Yeltsin.
Chernomyrdin called "unacceptable" the formation of groups to
support his candidacy for the presidency, saying he knew nothing about
them, ITAR-TASS reported on January 31. Groups have appeared in
St. Petersburg and Orenburg.

On February 8, 1996, at a meeting of the Council of Our Home is Russia,
Chernomyrdin officially announced that he will not run for
president in 1996. He expressed his strong support of
Yeltsin's candidacy. He emphasized
that he will help President Yeltsin
in organization of a vigorous electoral campaign.
Yeltsin officially announced
his candidacy on February 15, in Yekaterinburg.

Chernomyrdin said on March 24 his centrist political bloc
would try to create a broad coalition of parties to support
President Boris Yeltsin's bid
for re-election. Chernomyrdin's pledge confirmed his
Our Home is Russia movement would back
Yeltsin in the June 16
election. "To sum up why Our Home is Russia is for
Yeltsin, I can say only one
thing -- because we are for reforms, for the constitution of
Russia, for peace in Chechnya, for a normal life in Russia,"
Chernomyrdin told Itar-Tass news agency.